


we're so okay here (we're doing fine)

by eleven_twelve



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, In the end, M/M, but he also wants to be a pilot, donghyuck is a cellist, its fine tho, mark is just kinda lost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 19:40:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11630520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleven_twelve/pseuds/eleven_twelve
Summary: Donghyuck doesn't think about falling, not until Mark casually mentions how easy it happens.





	we're so okay here (we're doing fine)

 

Lee Donghyuck loves two things.

He maybe makes unintentional, purely accidental lists on how he's slowly allowed his entire life to shape around those things. It's unnoticeable to people that don't spend their entire days watching the way Donghyuck seems to give up on everything that doesn't come remotely close to what he deems worthy of his love. (Which is not at all some arrogant, pedantic trait by the way. It's just that Donghyuck really  _really_ loves the things he loves until there's not enough room left in his mind to think of anything else.)

However, it is noticeable to the small number of friends he has left, to his parents and his younger siblings, to his twin sister and his boss and the colleges that don't receive the applications that he doesn't send. It's in the way he wakes up in the late afternoon and stuffs pages upon pages of sheet music in the backpack he closes with the airplane keychain attached to the zipper. It's in the way he spends more time looking up than around, inevitably resulting in three near-death experiences and several fractures. 

His mother worries too much and his father doesn't care enough. His twin sister wants his attention to befriend the guys he went to high school with. Lee Jeno needs him to be his partner in their string duo and Na Jaemin would pick Lee Jeno over him any day (not that Donghyuck blames him for that, but it's still painful nonetheless). 

Donghyuck doesn't understand why it matters so much. When the letter arrives in the mail and the seventeen years that he's dedicated to getting into the Royal Conservatory for cello shatter into pieces on the marble kitchen floor underneath his bare feet, he leaves it torn apart on the grey granite of the counter and phones Jeno. This is where Donghyuck finds that, even as a peaceful person, he has the right to do what he does. (Even if he really doesn't, because he told Jeno that the latter could use the violin concerto Donghyuck composed. And it's great for him that he was accepted. And Donghyuck just falls apart in every way.) 

It's honestly wonderful that Jeno forgives him for the black eye and the split lip and the nearly broken nose. Donghyuck doesn't know where to go from when Jeno leaves.

-

Lee Donghyuck works the night shift at the gas station. He spends the empty hours between eleven and six staring at the inconstant flickering of neon green outside the window. He tries to find a rhythm, sets the metronome on his phone and counts how often the light flickers in the timespan of a minute. One hour passes in moderato and then another in allegro. Donghyuck reads over his sheet music for the hundredth time and follows the slow creep of the small hand on the clock.

When the big hand surpasses the small one at five, Donghyuck stops mopping the floor for the seventh time in three hours and looks up at the sound of the bell by the front door. The steady flow of customers usually diminishes by the time midnight rolls around, after that, Donghyuck gets the occasional drunk from one to four, or a truck driver deciding that the gas is too expensive on the highway. He doesn't get boys wearing backpacks bigger than themselves at half six. 

He moves over to go stand behind the register and follows the boy's brown hair sticking out from inbetween the racks of porn magazines and salty snacks. His eyes fall onto the backpack, bulking like it's holding the boy's entire life, travel further down to his pink shirt and his wide light-wash jeans, the yellow stripes on his reeboks. After a while the boy raises his head and stares straight into Donghyuck's prying eyes. He turns away like he's been caught cutting bright pink peonies from his neighbour's bush as he does every summer. His cheeks probably turn red.

"A pack of Camel Gold please," the boy says, lightly setting down a cup of iced coffee on the counter, two packs of sour gummy-worms still in his hand. Donghyuck thinks the boy's voice doesn't sound like one of a smoker, not as cracked around the edges like his grandfather's, not as interrupted by coughs as his friend Taeyong's. He slides him the pack, it's none of his business anyways. 

"Fourteen dollars and twenty-nine cents," Donghyuck says. He watches the boy rummage through his pockets for spare change, the coins jingling inbetween his bony fingers. He hands Donghyuck a twenty bill, gives him an apologetic shrug and a soft  _sorry_. Donghyuck assumes, based on nothing solid but his rolling r's in the way that isn't native to this town that the boy is Canadian.

When the maybe Canadian boy leaves, and the bell chimes again against the empty orange walls of the store, Donghyuck goes back to mopping the floor for the eighth time. 

Renjun comes in at a quarter to six and asks Donghyuck about the guy outside. Donghyuck cranes his neck to look at the figure on the sill of the storefront window, neon green then dark and then neon green again. "He came in 'bout twenty minutes ago," Donghyuck says, not taking his eyes off the boy, "Maybe he's waiting for someone to pick him up." Renjun shrugs, "You want some coffee?" Donghyuck doesn't say no.

After coffee and an update on Renjun's community college life, he heads out the back door and walks over to his bike, a bright red in the rays of the rising sun. In front of the store, the boy now sits cross-legged on the floor, head leaned against the big backpack on the gum-covered pavement beside him. Donghyuck can't tell if he's sleeping. 

"Hey man," he calls out, the boy languidly opens his eyes and looks up, "you alright?" He gets a half nod and then a shrug in return. Donghyuck sets his bike against the brick wall and sits down next to the boy, skin a light peach in the pink light. The boy offers him a gummy worm. A mobile home drives past. "Thanks," he says, shifting his gaze from the bay to the boy's high cheekbones. 

"Don't you want to get out of here after a long shift?" The boy asks when the sun has risen enough for things to turn into their usual too bright end of summer colours. The rolling r's are back, and the way he pronounces out like an almost _oot_. "Nah not really," he replies, "this place is like, cathartic." The boy hums. Donghyuck wonders if he knows what cathartic means.

Donghyuck's phone rings, he lets it. It rings twice more and the boy looks over at him. Donghyuck looks back. "You not gonna answer that?" Donghyuck rests his head against the grainy red bricks, shakes it softly, pushes stray strands of dark auburn out of his eyes. "What music is that anyway?" He asks later, and Donghyuck's interest is piqued. "Vivaldi," he says, "It's a cello concerto." The boy nods and turns away, "That's cool." 

It ends then when Donghyuck's phone rings again and his mother kind of screams at him in anger at not picking up, she was so worried, tells him to come home immediately to help her bake a cake for his grandmother's birthday. Donghyuck rolls his eyes and holds the phone several decimetres away from his ear shell and his fresh tragus piercing. The boy next to him huffs out a breathy laugh. Donghyuck smiles back. "Gotta go," he says apologetically, pulling up the boy when he reaches out a big hand, "My mom wants me to bake a cake." The boy laughs again, quietly, mezzo piano, "I don't even know how to bake." Donghyuck shrugs, "Me neither."

He settles on his bike and turns to look back at the boy hoisting up his heavy backpack. "See you around-" He trails off, not knowing a name, or if this is really a see you again occasion at all. "Mark Lee," the other answers and dusts off his jeans, "Yeah I'll see you around, bro." Donghyuck scoffs, "Not bro," he says, "Donghyuck." He salutes and drives off, looking up instead of around.

-

Mark Lee dresses like a nineties sitcom character, like some Korean version of the Fresh Prince or a slightly less muscular Joey Tribbiani. Donghyuck notices when Mark stops by again one morning, at ten to four, with a backpack holding maybe only half of his life this time. He buys another packet of Camel Gold and tells Donghyuck to keep the change. "So generous," he jokes after a drawn-out yawn. Mark smirks like a nineties sitcom character too.

"Are you just gonna spend the entire morning in front of my window again?" He asks, after Mark keeps his elbows perched on the wooden counter and doesn't seem to want to move any time soon. "Probably," he replies, voice muffled by the fraying sleeves of his denim jacket and the way he's pushed his cheeks into his mouth, "Don't have anything better to do anyways." He sets his backpack down on the counter and hops up after it. Donghyuck sighs but doesn't comment. Mark's presence is at least an upgrade from the usual empty early mornings. 

A customer comes in at half five, slightly intoxicated and very clumsy. She manages to knock over a newspaper stand on her way to the register. Mark pauzes his opinionated rant on the current education system and turns to Donghyuck with a half smile pulling at the corner of his thin lips. The girl pulls her long black hair into a ponytail and nearly crashes into Mark. Donghyuck is vaguely annoyed. 

"Can I help you with anything," he says, voice bitter like the cold black coffee Renjun always offers him. The girl asks him for the number of a taxi service, words slurred together in a wavy sort of way that makes Donghyuck feel distinctly nauseous. Mark seems to notice and offers to call her a cab. "What was that about?" He asks when the girl leaves, worry evident in his cracking voice. For a split second, it's sounds like Mark is in the beginning of puberty, and his about once again sounds like an almost  _aboot_ _._

Donghyuck shakes his head and waves Mark off. "It's nothing," he says, because it _is_  nothing, because Donghyuck sometimes gets that when things shift away from a usual predictable routine, a caesura inbetween two well known pieces. He just didn't expect anyone to ask him to call a taxi service because it's never happened before. Mark shoots him another wary look and joins him behind the register. He looks like he wants to say something but hesitantly opens and closes his mouth again and again until Donghyuck asks him about the need of sexual education in middle school. 

It starts raining when Renjun arrives to take over his shift, soaking wet and annoyed at the weeping world. He eyes Mark, who shyly smiles at him, and sighs. Donghyuck goes to change his t-shirt. "You wanna go get breakfast?" He asks Mark when he returns, the latter still sitting on the counter, skinny legs dangling off the counter, white socks almost reaching the floor Donghyuck mopped four times. The boy looks up from the coffee Renjun had offered him and throws him a smile, lights up in horizontal stripes of golden sunlight. "Sure."

They walk right beside each other on the damp pavement, Donghyuck's red bike inbetween them, squeaking every now and then because of the wet brakes. "You know," Mark pipes up," Your friend makes really horrible coffee." Donghyuck laughs and looks up at the grey clouds. "Tell me about it." The eucalyptus trees on the sides of the road drip dark green. The smell of rain and fresh fills Donghyuck's lungs until he can't breathe anymore. They enter a small diner that looks out over the harbour. Mark orders waffles with maple syrup, Donghyuck wants bacon and eggs. 

"Why are you wearing a girl's shirt?" Mark questions, face stuffed with waffle, there's maple syrup dripping down his chin. Donghyuck glances down at his pink shirt. The sleeves are frilly. "This is not a girl's shirt," he defends himself, although he doesn't need to because Mark's tone is more interested than vicious and Donghyuck's girl shirt has purple lovehearts on it. "I like it," he says after Mark raises his eyebrows in disbelief. "Me too," the other replies, and takes Donghyuck by surprise. His heartbeat increases steadily, a non-stop crescendo, until Mark chokes on his coffee and ruins the silence. 

-

There comes another bout of numbness when Donghyuck's new cello arrives. Willow and mahogany, strings of sheep's intestines, carefully handcrafted for Donghyuck's eighteenth birthday. His parents decide he can have it now, because he's kind of outgrown his old cello, and it doesn't sound as warm as this one does, doesn't taste as rich and sweet.

He locks himself up in his room for days on end, lets the old wooden floorboards creak with warm vibrations when he sets his bow to the strings and plays for hours upon hours. Wallows in the way the light wood on the back seems to be on fire when it's pressed against his chest and fills up the hollow spaces inbetween his ribs. 

He stops playing on the third day, when his mother knocks on the door of his room and tries to discreetly shut out the complaints of his younger siblings. "Donghyuck, honey, your boss called and threatened to fire you if you don't show up tonight." Donghyuck shrugs, because he doesn't care about his job, because he doesn't love his job like he loves his new cello, and because he doesn't remember what he does it for. Until he does. 

"Shit," he swears. His mother sends him a scowl. "Shit, shit, shit, shit." He takes a look at the clock and jumps. It's ten past ten. "I have to go, mom," he yells, carefully putting the cello down in its case and pulling an orange sweater over his head. He hasn't showered in four days. 

He doesn't look up when he bikes down the hill towards the gas station, looks around for once. If there's one thing Donghyuck can't lose that he doesn't love, it's his job, because he needs it to be able to pay for the Aviation Academy, because he can't let the rest of his future plan smash into pieces being so careless.

Mark shows up at four fifteen, seemingly surprised to find Donghyuck behind the register again. "Where were you?" He asks. Donghyuck wonders how often Mark came around to find some co-worker Donghyuck can't bother to remember the name of in his place. "Home," he shrugs. Mark tilts his head to the right, he looks like a child in his Winnie The Pooh sweater. Donghyuck decides to tell him about his cello. Mark listens while the light in the back flickers green black green.

-

It becomes a regular occurrence after that night. Mark comes around in the early morning, sets his backpack on the counter and munches on some sour gummy worms, talks to Donghyuck while the latter mops the floor and tries to ignore the pervasive smell of gasoline. 

The neon light gets fixed and shines a bright green all night long. Donghyuck reads through his mathematics book and ignores the empty staves on the sheet music in his backpack. He fumbles with the airplane keychain and thinks of the future. Pilot or composer, pilot or composer, pilot or composer. His brain screams until Donghyuck can't hear the bell.

"Yo, Hyuck," Mark slings and arm over his shoulder and tells him about his new guitar. Donghyuck gets distracted, Mark does that a lot and he's grateful for it. The voice whispering pilot repetitively gets shut down. "Do you wanna hang at my house later?" Mark asks and tries to figure out what's going on in Donghyuck's head. He stumbles over his words.

Donghyuck nods and pushes the mathematics book aside. "Yeah, sounds good," he smiles, "I need to go drop off my backpack at home first, though." 

-

Mark lives in a large gray house on top of the hill Donghyuck used to skate on. There's black pines and eucalyptus trees on both sides of the road, cypresses and orange trees in the garden, weeping willows and golden rain. Donghyuck gapes as Mark leads him to the front door, smiling sheepishly. 

The hallway smells of cigarette smoke and rain. "My dad used to smoke inside," Mark explains. The scent is stuck in the walls and inbetween the planks of the hardwood floors. "Don't you smoke?" Donghyuck questions and Mark denies with a quick, "Me? Hell no." Donghyuck wasn't wrong about his smooth voice after all. It's taken on something else too, a comforting tone, a reassurance.

In Mark's room there's a balcony that looks out over what Donghyuck assumes is the entire world. (It's  _his_ entire world, anyway.) Mark opens the white curtains and pulls on Donghyuck's hand to get his attention. Donghyuck doesn't pull away. "Are you hungry?" He asks. "Starving," Donghyuck replies.

They're met with an empty fridge, but Mark pulls out a small plastic container from a kitchen cabinet and shows him the backyard. They pick currents and raspberries, apples and the fattest purple figs they can find. "Always handy to have a small orchard in your garden," Donghyuck jokes and Mark pushes his shoulder, in the soft, friendly way Donghyuck's missed for years.

They spend the afternoon on a bright yellow rug in Mark's room. Mark tells Donghyuck about Canada and Donghyuck tells Mark about the rejection letter when he asks why Donghyuck doesn't go to school. It feels like they're both stuck in a never-ending inbetween state in this town. They don't know what's coming next.

The sun sets and Mark moves to sit on the railing of the balcony, watches how the entire world seems to be drowning in the dying light. They're safely perched up on their hilltop, looking out over the harbour and the bay and the endless expanse of sky and ocean where the two mingle somewhere at the horizon. 

"Why are you always up so early?" Donghyuck asks the question that's been on his mind for quite some time. It goes slow, like he's trying not to scare Mark away. The other boy sighs deeply, moves his right hand to play with the long scar running all the way from his left elbow to his left thumb. It's pink and thick and it looks like it hasn't been there long enough for Mark to get used to it.

"I try to leave," he says then, voice soft in the warm wind, lights of the harbour reflected in his black eyes. "I try to leave but I can't." Mark turns to look at him with some kind of hope in his eyes, as if he needs Donghyuck to understand. "All my friends, they're everywhere, scattered all over the world." He sniffs and looks down at his feet and the trees below, "I'm stuck here, Hyuck, and I don't know where to go and I don't know what to do." 

Donghyuck swallows thickly, and Mark notices that he doesn't get it. He pulls up his sleeve and shows him the scar. "I was in a plane crash last year." Donghyuck hovers his fingers over the scar, leaves a trail of goosebumps behind on Mark's cold skin. "I lost my mom, my brother." There's a lot of silence, a whole rest until Mark starts again, "And it's not like there's anything here, in this town, but now I have you and that's at least one reason not to leave." 

Donghyuck doesn't know what to say, just sits and listens to the heavy thumping of his heartbeat in his ears. "I want to be a pilot," he stammers out and nearly hits himself in the face because  _holy shit_. Mark nods and smiles at him, huffs out a breathy laugh. Donghyuck looks up to where the blinking red lights of a plane cut the sky into pieces. Mark holds his hand.

Later, when it's so late it's almost early, Mark allows Donghyuck to crawl into bed with him because "holy shit the floor is fucking freezing." Their feet touch and Donghyuck can't help but wonder if Mark's the kind of person who puts pillows inbetween them to keep them from touching. Donghyuck decides he's not when Mark wraps a steady arm around Donghyuck's back, shivers again (not from the cold this time).

-

Donghyuck shows Mark his cello one afternoon, when everything shines like gold underneath the autumn leaves. Mark trail his fingers along the neck and plucks at the strings, holds his hand against the resonance box when Donghyuck plays. Donghyuck notes how Mark's eyes flutter shut at the hollow vibrations. "They remind me of the bass at concerts," he says and Donghyuck wants to see him like this forever.

When Donghyuck pulls the cello out of the wooden plank and puts it back into his box, resins the hairs on his bow, Mark turns to look at the sheet music on the lecture. "This is so cool," he says, taking in the notes that immediately turn into melodies in Donghyuck's mind. "You play guitar right?" He asks, "Can you not read these?" He smoothens the paper where Mark's long fingers have crumpled it. Mark turns to him and blushes "Yeah, no, I use tabs." He mutters and Donghyuck laughs at his unnecessary embarrassment. 

Donghyuck looks down at the sheet, staves filled with half notes and full notes and four sixteenths. His eyes halt at a four count rest. "It's beautiful you know?" He says. Mark looks at him with his lips slightly parted, voice wavering like ocean waves when he breathes out a soft "I bet."

-

Donghyuck doesn't think about falling, not until Mark casually mentions how easy it happens. "Like, I literally fell ten kilometers to the ground," he laughs, pink gummy worm in his open mouth. Mark used to laugh slight and soft, now he laughs like the entire world needs to hear it, forte, no longer mezzo piano (Donghyuck doesn't mind at all). 

It sticks in Donghyuck's mind long after Mark leaves to go bring his father his cigarettes. He knows Mark meant falling in the physical way, after Donghyuck had crashed his bike for the upteenth time and scraped his elbow until it bled. It makes him think of Mark's sunburnt cheeks. Donghyuck doesn't even know when Mark started being on his mind more often that cello concertos and airplane mechanics.

-

Mark looks up instead of around when Donghyuck points out the flock of migrating birds in the deep blue sky. "See you next year," Mark says. Donghyuck watches how his words turn into soft white clouds when they leave Mark's chapped lips. "I'll miss you."

"I'm not going anywhere," Donghyuck jokes. Mark raises his eyebrows at him, his cheeks look rounder these days, his brown hair sticks out from underneath his woollen hat. "Unfortunately," he retorts, and Donghyuck gasps in mock offense. "I did not expect this from you," he screeches. "What other friends do you have that you could expect it from then?" Mark asks. Donghyuck lets a laugh escape his lips and links their arms together, "Touché, my friend."

They look for stones on the beach and drink hot chocolate from a thermos. "I have a secret," Mark tells him, "But you can't laugh at me." Donghyuck links their pinkies together and pits on the ground for good measure. "I've been writing songs about you," he whispers softly, and Donghyuck almost wants to pretend that he didn't hear that just to hear Mark say it again.

He looks at the tip of Mark's nose, bright red from the cold, like his cheeks and the tips of his fingers. Mark smiles bashfully and ducks his head before Donghyuck has the chance to squish his cheeks. "They're not good, though," he says. Donghyuck doesn't care. He's heard enough good music to last a lifetime.

-

Mark Lee smells like washing powder and rain. Donghyuck doesn't realise how at home he feels with the other until he's practicing for his Royal Conservatory audition again and Mark doesn't come over. What Mark does do, though is send Donghyuck a song he's written about him, about sun-kissed cheeks and sparkling eyes and all the clichés in the world. Donghyuck responds with a piece he's composed thinking about the way Mark's voice sounds, andante then allegro, about how he feel like he could drown in its depth, and although Mark doesn't understand it, he feels like it conveys the message well enough.

-

They're looking out over the entire world again and Donghyuck holds his future in his hands. Mark holds onto the railing of the balcony and watches Donghyuck with the sun in his eyes. 

The letter gets left whole this time, thrown on dark hardwood floors as Donghyuck nearly launches himself into Mark's arms, holds him so tight that Mark jokingly tells him to stop trying to murder him. "I did it," Donghyuck says, and Mark beams, "I really did it." 

Mark rakes his long fingers through sunshine and dark auburn, his nineties sitcom smirk shifts into the brightest smile Donghyuck has ever seen. "Shit, I'm so proud of you," he says, "I'm so-" Mark breathes out like he's at loss for words. Donghyuck hears the  _thump_ _thump_ _thump_ of his heart like a metronome in his ears, vivace. Mark just laughs his entire world laugh and Donghyuck thinks of his rolling r's. "Falling is easy," Dongyuck jokes. Mark scoffs, "Don't patronize me," he says, and leans infinitesimally closer until Donghyuck can't take it and presses their lips together. 

When they pull away Donghyuck looks up instead of around and Mark almost misses his lips the second time. After the sky, Mark might just be Donghyuck's favourite thing to look at.

-

Lee Donghyuck loves three things.

 

**Author's Note:**

> yo, idk what this is but im done with high school, (almost) done with work, and i missed my boys so yeah. i really cant tell if this is a good one bc it makes sense in my mind but like... idk  
> anyways leave a kudo or a comment bc i appreciate those a lot <3 
> 
> (also i truly overexaggerated mark's canadian accent but whatever i based it on degrassi)  
> (also the title is from white ferrari by frank ocean bc im an uncreative piece of shit)


End file.
